Halo Master Chief Collection [H:MCC] [XO, XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

[AlNom]

But at 1080p everything should be seen in the distance without pixel crawling at all.

You'll still see pixel crawling, but that'll depend on the situation

Do you believe they are going to keep the incredible HDR lighting from Halo 3, which we never saw ever since in any X360 game?

I wonder if that effect can be replicated on the eSRAM, and it seemed to be very bandwidth intensive.

The dual light buffers was a roundabout way to get higher dynamic range while keeping blending support, which Xenos didn't have with FP16 format. The twin buffers still amount to the same memory space as a single FP16 target anyway. It'd be smarter to ditch the dual rendertargets as they'd get more fillrate back (although I wonder what the real bottleneck is for the port), although there could be some issues making the lighting behave the same way as before as FP16 is a completely different format, or maybe it's just a non-issue.

 

[HTupolev]

But at 1080p everything should be seen in the distance without pixel crawling at all.

1080p alone isn't going to eliminate the aliasing. I typically sit 6'-10' from a 37" TV, I can clearly see the jaggies in 1080p games on the shorter end of that range, and I can still perceive the crawling just fine at the longer end, and that's just for edges of large surfaces (it always gets worse with thin stuff).

ppAA could do a good job of eliminating the major stairsteps, but I'm not sure I like the idea of spatial analytical crayons on my Halo 3. If they do anything of that sort, it had better be gentle.

although there could be some issues making the lighting behave the same way as before as FP16 is a completely different format, or maybe it's just a non-issue.

Yeah, that's what I'd be concerned about. Getting the same dynamic range shouldn't be hard these days, but for a perfect port you might want to be careful about how the ranges are actually managed. The fact that Halo 3 handles the range in two separate buffers means that it could be doing some funny business that the other approaches to using HDR data are not perfectly equivalent to.

 

[Cyan]

1080p alone isn't going to eliminate the aliasing. I typically sit 6'-10' from a 37" TV, I can clearly see the jaggies in 1080p games on the shorter end of that range, and I can still perceive the crawling just fine at the longer end, and that's just for edges of large surfaces (it always gets worse with thin stuff).

ppAA could do a good job of eliminating the major stairsteps, but I'm not sure I like the idea of spatial analytical crayons on my Halo 3. If they do anything of that sort, it had better be gentle.


Yeah, that's what I'd be concerned about. Getting the same dynamic range shouldn't be hard these days, but for a perfect port you might want to be careful about how the ranges are actually managed. The fact that Halo 3 handles the range in two separate buffers means that it could be doing some funny business that the other approaches to using HDR data are not perfectly equivalent to.

It was pixel crawling, plus a pixelated mess. I originally played Halo 3 on a 22" TV and the game looked just okay on my new one, but when in open areas, the distant objects and stuff was almost impossible to distinguish.

It looked like that before, sure, but one didn't notice...

Yeah, that's what I'd be concerned about. Getting the same dynamic range shouldn't be hard these days, but for a perfect port you might want to be careful about how the ranges are actually managed. The fact that Halo 3 handles the range in two separate buffers means that it could be doing some funny business that the other approaches to using HDR data are not perfectly equivalent to.

Do you suspect that the awesomely nice original HDR lighting is not going to make it into the new iteration?

I hope it does, since the new bandwidth saving technologies would help with that.

That HDR lighting was a huge deal for me on Halo 3, however they made it...

 

[AlNom]

Yeah, that's what I'd be concerned about. Getting the same dynamic range shouldn't be hard these days, but for a perfect port you might want to be careful about how the ranges are actually managed. The fact that Halo 3 handles the range in two separate buffers means that it could be doing some funny business that the other approaches to using HDR data are not perfectly equivalent to.

Here's to hoping they have time to make use of the HW sensibly.

I do wonder about the water... Seems like something that was rather 360-specific.

Do you suspect that the awesomely nice original HDR lighting is not going to make it into the new iteration?

I'm sure they'll keep the lighting model as close as possible (spherical harmonics & lightmaps & all).

I actually wonder if they'd have time to re-compress with the newer texture formats.

 

[Cyan]

Here's to hoping they have time to make use of the HW sensibly.

I do wonder about the water... Seems like something that was rather 360-specific.

The water, iirc, was just tessellated water, so the Xbox One should be able to run that with flying colours, I think.

They should tout those features all over again before release of the new version. It'd be nice, and fun. :smile2:

They mentioned the normal maps in Halo 2 as a turning point in a recent video, after all.

There should be a correlation... but I don't know if it would be a high one.., or not... x__x I hope it is *pixel perfect* in that sense.

 

[AlNom]

The water, iirc, was just tessellated water, so the Xbox One should be able to run that with flying colours, I think.

I mean down to the code/implementation. They might need to rebuild it from scratch.

 

[HTupolev]

It was pixel crawling, plus a pixelated mess. I originally played Halo 3 on a 22" TV and the game looked just okay on my new one, but when in open areas, the distant objects and stuff was almost impossible to distinguish.

To this day, I occasionally still play Halo 3 on a small SD CRT; it's actually alright outside of the catastrophic FoV (~55 degrees in 4:3 mode even before you account for overscan). We're talking 6-10 feet from a 20" screen.

The aliasing is still entirely visible.

I do wonder about the water... Seems like something that was rather 360-specific.

That's an interesting question. The water is dynamically tessellated through some means or another. Depending on how it's done, there might be very significant changes in how that should run through the graphics pipeline? I dunno. The new platforms should be very able to do it, though.

At any rate, I'd be astounded if they released a Halo 3 variant without the water system or at least something very close.

 

[AlNom]

That's an interesting question. The water is dynamically tessellated through some means or another. Depending on how it's done, there might be very significant changes in how that should run through the graphics pipeline? I dunno. The new platforms should be very able to do it, though.

At any rate, I'd be astounded if they released a Halo 3 variant without the water system or at least something very close.

Aye. Apologies if I sounded like it'd be impossible. I did wonder if they used memexport for the tessellation, but yeah, I was thinking that it might be something that's not 1:1 accurate (for better or worse, hopefully better ). I suppose I was thinking along the lines of how Bungie did their version of HBAO for Halo Reach when there's higher quality AO implementations on PC already that one could hypothetically throw in there instead if such a port were done. Overthinking >_<

Would be cool if they did update the shaders.

The water in Halo 4 was a bit weird too - mostly normal map interactions IIRC?, but then it seemed to switch to polygons with high enough disturbance. I only really noticed on the Valhalla remake with the warthog.


gah... hope they'll be able to show us soon. XD

 

[HTupolev]

The water in Halo 4 was a bit weird too - mostly normal map interactions IIRC?, but then it seemed to switch to polygons with high enough disturbance. I only really noticed on the Valhalla remake with the warthog.

As far as I've ever been able to tell, Halo 4's playspace water never uses any polygonal animation anywhere. Maybe I'll experiment with it some later. It also doesn't have particularly great shading.

Halo 3's water is a bit rough around the edges, but it's far more robust and interesting than water in its successors. All the on-map water is geometrically-animated and responds to objects, all the on-map water has an environmental specular response which behaves correctly with respect to shadows (i.e. the sharp sun reflection vanishes but the overall area cubemap remains for areas of water that are environmentally shadowed), the water surface has a special response to dynamic lights to imitate light scattering...
Reach has some decent water features, and it's more polished in some respects, but it seems to never check very many boxes off at once.

 

[AlNom]

As far as I've ever been able to tell, Halo 4's playspace water never uses any polygonal animation anywhere. Maybe I'll experiment with it some later. It also doesn't have particularly great shading.

Yeah, I'd check again too, but I don't have the game anymore.

The one time I did check, it was less than a month after release. I was messing around on Ragnarock near the waterfalls I believe... It might be enough to drive fast through the water streams on that map with a warthog, and then check out the surface upclose in theatre mode. You might try high explosive weaponry too.

It was a pretty bizarre behaviour if I recall correctly. It wasn't actually something I was looking for so much as it was just an odd perturbation in the surface that caught my eye while doing some silly warthog things.

 

[Globalisateur]

640p30 to 1080p60 should be pretty noticeable.

I could see them changing some shaders here and there during the porting process.

Would be neat if they added better motion blur, but they should really take care of the edge aliasing and texture filtering... and that reminds me, the shadow draw distance. -_- Guess we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out since they're still working within the confines of the old engine and also don't want anything to break (much).

I am not sure if they'll going to improve dramatically the effect/AA on Halo 3 and 4. From 640/720p30fps to 1080p60fps is already a big gap. It's roughly 5 or 6 times more pixels displayed which is roughly the difference between X360 and XB1. For instance they barely hit 1080p30fps with Tomb Raider and it ran at 720p30fps on X360...But here they intend to output twice what Tomb Raider's remake did?

So I am more concerned about the performance on those games: how solid will be the 60fps? Titanfall ~60fps with constant screen tearing or COD ~60fps? I would really hate to play those game with a heavy dose of screen tearing.

We already know that Halo 2 may not even be at 1080p: from Eurogamer article:

"Some of the levels in Halo 4 are already running at 1080p. I'm confident some of the games will get there. I'm not confident in all of them."

I would prefer some dynamic resolution, dependant of the scene like Wolfenstein or on some specific levels like Tomb Raider DE. It would assure the obligatory "Halo 1080p" marketing label and avoid too much screen tearing nastiness.

 

[shredenvain]

You know that every Halo game has always dropped frames when its load future assets while being played. Its more like a slight pause. As far as Halo2A there isnt any reason for them to have the original Halo 2 at 1080p. It would look fine at 720 or 900 but the redone side of it needs to hit 1080p. Hopefully screen tearing will be at a minimum though. You dont seem to have any confidence in the Xbox One's potential graphical output Global. You are comparing Tomb Raider on the 360 which came late in it's life cycle to Tomb Raider DE which was almost a launch title on the One. Tomb Raider being a multiplat doesnt even really qualify for the discussion of an exclusive games potential performance. Im hopeful they hit 1080p on H2A being that they already stated it would be at E3, but if they have to drop it to 900p to keep it smooth than so be it. It isnt going to be an issue for people that love and really want to play a modern looking Halo 2.

 

[Cyan]

More details on the game. Instead of the vertical split screen of my favourite game of the series, Halo 2, the split screen is going to be horizontal.

http://www.totalxbox.com/78487/new-halo-the-master-chief-collection-details-co-op-forge-and-more/

Halo: CE Anniversary - 2 players max, split-screen or online
Halo 2: Anniversary - 2 players max, split-screen or online
Halo 3 - 4 players max online, 2 players max split-screen
Halo 4 - 4 players max online, 2 players max split-screen

343 hopes to offer all the original custom game options for each title, too, and Halo 2 Anniversary's multiplayer and campaign will preserve all of the original Halo 2 button combos, such as BXR. There's a caveat: certain button combos and glitches may not work as they once did on the game's six remastered maps, as these now run on a new engine. "Rest assured, we are working very hard to match the original experience as closely as possible on this engine."

Finally, anybody holding out for an Xbox 360 version should uncross his or her fingers. "We are dedicated to bringing a full and fun experience to Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One, providing you with dedicated servers, a unified interface, increased visual fidelity, and gameplay running at 60 fps. We do not have any plans to bring the game to Xbox 360 as the game size, enhanced features and technical specifications simply can't support it."

 

[Cyan]

To this day, I occasionally still play Halo 3 on a small SD CRT; it's actually alright outside of the catastrophic FoV (~55 degrees in 4:3 mode even before you account for overscan). We're talking 6-10 feet from a 20" screen.

The aliasing is still entirely visible.

Too geeky for me to understand everything, I got used to the original FOV -didn't find it amazing but anyways, I wasn't even looking for it-.

I do miss perfect square screens tho.

Additionally, I completed Halo 2 campaign like 10 times, on Legendary and all. But never ever the Hangar level, where I had to drop the difficulty level to Heroic.

By my guts I hope I can achieve that dream in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, once and for all. It's one of my challenges for the new version.

 

[AlNom]

More details on the game. Instead of the vertical split screen of my favourite game of the series, Halo 2, the split screen is going to be horizontal.

Just what I was hoping for.

 

[HTupolev]

Too geeky for me to understand everything, I got used to the original FOV -didn't find it amazing but anyways, I wasn't even looking for it-.

It's hardly something I was "looking for" in 2007*, but I still felt it. 55 degrees is rather tunnel-visionish.

*By contrast, I now analyze FoV for funsies.

I do miss perfect square screens tho.

SD CRTs are still typically a little wider than they are tall. The aspect ratio that's typically accepted as "default" for NTSC is 4:3, though the displays don't tend to use exactly this once overscan is handled, and of course your might also have rounded edges on the image and whatnot in some cases.

More details on the game. Instead of the vertical split screen of my favourite game of the series, Halo 2, the split screen is going to be horizontal.

What does "horizontal" mean? Left-right split? If so, they need something better than the FoV in Halo 2's original 16:9 split. That crap is awful; even on a 16:9 display, Halo 2 split-screen is far better in a pillarboxed 4:3. Even the 4:3 split is a bit underwhelming, but it's tolerable.

 

[(((interference)))]

So wait, they took out 4 player splitscreen for the remakes?
There goes any chance of me buying it then...

 

[AlNom]

What does "horizontal" mean? Left-right split? If so, they need something better than the FoV in Halo 2's original 16:9 split. That crap is awful; even on a 16:9 display, Halo 2 split-screen is far better in a pillarboxed 4:3. Even the 4:3 split is a bit underwhelming, but it's tolerable.

I'd say they mean to switch away from the original 16:9 split (shopping cart vision) otherwise they wouldn't mention it. I was hoping to get an answer from Stinkles, but either he didn't know at the time or he skipped my post.

Don't see why they don't just do it the same way as Gears of War. Need all the FOV one can get considering how much screen space is lost. :|

 

[HTupolev]

Don't see why they don't just do it the same way as Gears of War. Need all the FOV one can get considering how much screen space is lost. :|

That's an interesting comment.

IIRC, Gears adjusts FoV for different aspect ratios by holding horizontal view constant and allowing the vertical to change, at least for two-player top-bottom split. If that behavior is maintained for left-right split, it means you'd actually get a far broader view with a left-right split (healthy horizontal sweep with HUGE vertical sweep) than with a top-bottom split (healthy horizontal sweep, but like looking through a mail slot).

By contrast, most Halo games adjust FoV for different aspect ratios by holding vertical view constant and adjusting the horizontal view. Which is why even Halo 3 offers a heathy FoV when playing two-player split-screen; it's ~92 degrees. CE and ODST offer HUGE FoV in two-player split, almost 110 degrees! This means that "need all the FoV one can get considering how much screen space is lost" doesn't tend to apply; Halo games usually have no trouble offering plenty of FoV in split-screen. If anything, some people might say it's too much; pushing well over 100 degrees FoV in an 8:3 240-line window means that things are tiny on-screen in CE split-screen.
Halo 2 is where it gets weird for Halo, though. It's the only game in the series that doesn't lock vertical view, and it's really not clear what it's doing.

*shrug*

 

[AlNom]

IIRC, Gears adjusts FoV for different aspect ratios by holding horizontal view constant and allowing the vertical to change, at least for two-player top-bottom split.

Dunno, never tested it. I just want it filling up the entire screen as opposed to the black bars in H3+. :|

I certainly don't want the tunnel vision shit in classic H2 16:9 splitscreen, which didn't have enough FOV, which was what I was commenting on with "need all the FOV etc".

HCE was fine ........... because I could set the TV to fill the screen even if it was distorted.

edit: Judging by the shots there, I'd probably just want H3+ split but keep extending to the side. Black bars are annoying, although I suppose it's not as much of an issue for me now because the TV I have currently can do the stretch now whereas the TV I was playing on 7 years ago couldn't. Yes, distorted, but eh. ---------> Don't really care as much as the H2 classic garbage.

edit 2: yeah, just remembered. Gears does hFOV lock so you get more top/bottom in SP. Split-screen chopped top/bottom a fair bit (and uneven camera setup between P1 & P2 IIRC).